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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Gilroy say is wrong with contemporary criticism of African-American literature?
(a) Over-polarized vocabulary.
(b) Uncritical acceptance of all things primitive.
(c) Essentialism.
(d) Relativism.

2. What does Gilroy say Richard Wright was ambivalent to?
(a) Reconciliation with white culture.
(b) Harmonious coexistence with dominant culture.
(c) Assimilation.
(d) A closed racial community.

3. What are the two parts of the double consciousness Gilroy describes?
(a) Self-aware intellect and blind impulses and urges.
(b) Politics of subordination and politics of emancipation.
(c) Politics of fulfillment and politics of transformation.
(d) Primitive culture and modern culture.

4. What does Gilroy say Richard Wright was criticized for?
(a) Failing to write about specifically American concerns.
(b) Hatred of women.
(c) Writing men and women who are victims of the capitalist system.
(d) Writing misogynistic male characters.

5. What did Richard Wright criticize, according to Gilroy?
(a) Capitalism.
(b) Corporate industrialism.
(c) Modernity.
(d) Communism.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Gilroy say slavery tried to do to tradition?

2. How does Gilroy say that Richard Wright saw capitalism?

3. What does the Holocaust help us understood according to Gilroy?

4. Where does Gilroy say Richard Wright's profundity came from?

5. How does Gilroy defend Richard Wright against charges of sexism?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Gilroy have to say about violence in American culture?

2. Describe the pan-Africanism movement which Richard Wright was part of.

3. In what way was capitalist culture a kind of crisis in itself, Wright?

4. What does Gilroy say politics did for black culture?

5. What is the importance of the theme of love and loss in black popular arts, according to Gilroy?

6. Why do Jews and blacks both resist the comparison of slavery and the Holocaust, as Gilroy describes it?

7. What were Richard Wright's politics?

8. What was Richard Wright's feeling about white culture?

9. What origin legitimized Richard Wright in readers' eyes?

10. What relation does Gilroy draw between the black Atlantic and the Holocaust?

(see the answer keys)

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